mayjawintastawm

Winter Storm Watch for Wed afternoon/night just issued for the northern and central Front Range urban corridor. Seems a bit borderline- ? wonder if something changed.

OK, I have no good explanation then. You're probably somewhere around 6400 ft elevation, which should help upslope. Then again, most places east of E-470 have been really, really dry this winter. The little storm yesterday yielded 0.42" WE at our place, the wettest day since late June of last year.

Smokey, where in Parker are you? You must be threading the needle between the bands that have been over metro Denver and the higher elevation upslope on the south side of town.

5.3" here at 11 PM, still with maybe 1/2-1 hour to go but I'm not staying up. Will measure once more in the AM. EDIT: 5.5" final at 8 AM 2/12.

Dumping here, just getting into a band. Started at 2 PM, 2" so far and this is close to an inch an hour.

Ayuh. Gonna look like a lawbsta' if ya nawt careful!

Really, as a transplanted New Englander, even this year's "marginal" season is not bad at all by the standards we grew up with. Most areas (just checked Big Sky too) are 3/4 open, and melt out is not nearly as early or as dramatic as Eastern resorts due to higher elevations and dry air. All you need are 3-4 inches of powder on a decent base to have fun, and no reason that can't happen between now and next week. Enjjoy, and use LOTS of sunscreen!

And cold at our house this morning! -11 for a low right at 7 AM. Coldest in 3-4 years anyway, maybe longer.

Missed the band by maybe 4-5 miles at most... limped in with 6.0" of fluff over 25 hours, doubt if it was more than 0.25" WE. ValpoVike, you'll be getting 15" storms when the rest of us get cold rain in May.

NWS is talking about a Denver cyclone that could mess with snow amounts (in either direction) south of town. It does look like there is a counterclockwise circulation on radars, which pulled a brief band over here with 1/4 mile visibility about 4:30-5 PM, though now it's back to just light snow. Will be interesting to see what happens. Started just before 4 PM here.

New England storm is stealing all the energy from the rest of the continent. The rest of us get meh.

3.2", 11.5" Jan, 16.7" season. Getting there. Typically, snowfall by Groundhog Day is about 40% of the season total, so with next Tuesday we might be getting close to average.

Been looking at the New England threads. Boy is my blood pressure glad I don't live there anymore!!

I was looking at that as it was happening. Our friends just north of Burlington got a foot, while reports 10 miles away were like 5-7 inches. There was this narrow band that sat, then pivoted, right where those big amounts were, with what looked like upper level rotation moving W-->E. We got 4.5", consistent with half the world.

Yeah, this could overperform here if the moisture holds on long enough... forecast winds are just about perfect for upslope for my neighborhood (~020 for a solid 8 hour period)

1.1" snow today, 3.8" for the month, 9" season.

Got 0.3" for a season total of 7.9".

I was 12 in the Blizzard of '78 in E MA, when my parents took their only vacation without us EVER - to Bermuda. They were stuck there for an extra week, and we had off school for almost 2 weeks. Plow took 3 days to get to our street. We had fun with the babysitter, jumping off our roof into the drifts, and had to XC ski to the corner store to get whatever they had left. Now that was fun!

Amazing how a tiny difference in trajectory creates such different outcomes for the major EC cities. But the majority seem to track the heavy snow inland. I remember 12/5/03 well, had a 6 yo and a 4 yo kid and we built a VERY large snow fort once I was able to get home from work.

So it's probably the social media effect then. I remember driving from MA to FL in the late winter/early spring of 2010... a few days after the big storms and a few months before moving to CO. Never seen such snowbanks in MD/VA!!

Is it just me and social media, or has the East Coast had more than its share of winter epics the last 6-7 years? When I lived in MA, we had a big storm every 2-3 years, but I don't remember having anywhere near this many. Plus there has been a lot more cold Ohio Valley and east the past few years, that's certain.

Banding is nuts. 1 inch here at 1015 PM, looks like places less than 10 miles south and west got 5-6. Mountains even more impressive, with 3 and a half inches at Loveland Ski area but a foot just a few miles away. Lake effect indeed. Maybe the Chatfield Reservoir effect? EDIT: snow stake at bottom of Loveland Ski area says 8 inches. The SNOTEL site had 3 and a half. So ??

Very nice! We got 4.5" here, a good surprise. It's weird because there is a new COCORAHS station just a mile SW of me that measured 8". No way we got any more than 6" anywhere in the yard, even by "ski area measuring technique".

Honestly, I don't know if this ongoing fire situation was anything anyone could "prepare for": - High density, essentially urban to suburban area (this was not isolated homes surrounded by burnable vegetation) just downwind of foothills/prairie - Open space, mainly grass, to the west (not forested, just prairie) where it started - Driest 6 months in recorded weather history for the immediate area - Winds coming down the canyons with widespread, prolonged gusts over 80 MPH- a little ember can go miles with that kind of wind - NWS assessment as late as 3 AM today was mixed as far as high wind threat- the AFDs told you how much trouble they were having with their decisions AND IT'S FREAKING DECEMBER 30!! Just an enormous tragedy.